10 Wrestlers Who Were Secretly The Greatest Intercontinental Champions Ever

5. Jeff Jarrett

Like Rob Van Dam, Jeff Jarrett would go on to become a six time Intercontinental Champion when he defeated D€™Lo Brown for both the IC title and the European Championship in the same match at SummerSlam in August 1999. He remains one of only four people to hold both those mid-level titles simultaneously. At that time, his sixth Intercontinental Championship was a record, too - no one else had ever held the title so many times. It would remain a record until 2004, when Chris Jericho would surpass him to attain his seventh Intercontinental Championship. Jericho still holds the record, now set at nine IC title reigns, and it€™s unlikely that anyone will beat that anytime soon: the closest current WWE performer to it is King Barrett at five wins, who€™s leaving the WWE in the summer, and Dolph Ziggler, the Miz and Kofi Kingston, all at four wins. A man perennially at the top of the midcard, Jeff Jarrett was always better than he was made to appear by the WWF. The fact of his famous father was the sticking point for him: there was no way that Vince McMahon was going to push the son of Jerry Jarrett, one of the few holdouts from the territories, to the main event. Of course, Jarrett infamously held the WWF over a barrel with the Intercontinental Championship when he was due to drop it to Chyna at No Mercy in 1999. His contract had expired the night before and no one from the company had realised until it was too late: he was headed to WCW as the Intercontinental Champion. The story goes that Jarrett, having McMahon by the short n€™ curlies, got an impressive severance package for working that Sunday without a contract, including stock options in the WWF, which went public a month or so later. Jarrett hung around the main event in WCW until it folded, but had no route back into the WWF after that because of the manner of his departure€ ... and that€™s the story of how he and his father founded TNA. With Vince McMahon€™s money. In order to give himself somewhere to work.